How to Hide a Drive in Windows 10

How to Hide a Drive in Windows 10: Most of the Windows users are concerned about their private data which we intend to either hide or lock the folder or file using an encryption software or using Windows inbuilt encryption tools in order to protect our confidential data. But when you have many files or folders which needs to be encrypted or hidden then it’s not a good idea to encrypt each & every file or folder, instead what you can do is that you can shift all your confidential data to a particular drive (partition) then hide that drive all together to protect your private data.

Once you hide the particular drive then it will not be visible to anyone and hence no one will be able to access the drive, except you. But before making the drive hidden make sure it doesn’t contain any other files or folders except your private data which you want to be hidden. The disk drive would be hidden from File Explorer but you will still be able to access the drive by using the command prompt or address bar in the File Explorer.

But using this method to hide drive doesn’t prevent users from accessing disk management to view or change the drive characteristics. Other users can still access your hidden drive using 3rd party programs which are specifically made for this purpose. Anyway, without wasting any time let’s see How to Hide a Drive in Windows 10 with the help of the below-listed tutorial.

Method 3: How to Hide a Drive in Windows 10 using Registry Editor

3.Right-click on Explorer then select New and click on DWORD (32-bit) Value.

4.Name this newly created DWORD as NoDrives and hit Enter.

5.Now double-click on NoDrives DWORD to change its value according to:

Just make sure to select Decimal then under value data using any value from the below-listed table.

Drive Letter

Decimal Value Data

Show all drives

0

A

1

B

2

C

4

D

8

E

16

F

32

G

64

H

128

I

256

J

512

K

1024

L

2048

M

4096

N

8192

O

16384

P

32768

Q

65536

R

131072

S

262144

T

524288

U

1048576

V

2097152

W

4194304

X

8388608

Y

16777216

Z

33554432

Hide all drives

67108863

6.You can either hide a single drive or combination of drives, to hide a single drive (ex-drive F) simply enter 32 under value data field of NoDrives (make sure that Decimal is selected under Base) and click OK. To hide a combination of drives (ex-drive D & F) you need to add the decimal numbers for the drive (8+32) which means you need to enter 24 under the value data field.

7.Click OK then close the Registry Editor.

8.Reboot your PC to save changes.

After the reboot, you will no longer be able to see the drive which you have hidden but you would still be able to access it by using the specified path in the File Explorer. To unhide the drive simply right-click on the NoDrives DWORD and select Delete.

Method 4: How to Hide a Drive in Windows 10 using Group Policy Editor

Note: This method won’t work for Windows 10 Home editon users as it will only for Windows 10 Pro, Education, and Enterprise edition users.

3.Make sure to select File Explorer than in right window double-click on “Hide these specified drives in My Computer” policy.

4.Select Enabled then under Options, select the drive combinations you want or select the Restrict all drives option from the drop-down menu.

5.Click Apply followed by OK.

6.Restart your PC to save changes.

Using the above method will only remove the drive icon from File Explorer, you would still be able to access the drive using the address bar of the File Explorer. Also, there is no way to add more drive combination to the above list. To unhide the drive simply select Not Configured for the “Hide these specified drives in My Computer” policy.

Method 5: How to Hide a Drive in Windows 10 using Command Prompt

1.Press Windows Key + X then select Command Prompt (Admin).

2.Type the following command one by one and hit Enter after each:

diskpartlist volume (Note down the number of the volume for which you want to hide the drive for)select volume # (Replace the # with the number which you noted above)remove letter drive_letter (Replace drive_letter with actual drive letter which you want to use for example: remove letter H)

3.Once you hit Enter, you will see the message “Diskpart successfully removed the drive letter or mount point“. This will successfully hide your drive and in case, you want to unhide the drive simply use the following commands:

diskpartlist volume (Note down the number of the volume for which you want to unhide the drive for)select volume # (Replace the # with the number which you noted above)assign letter drive_letter (Replace drive_letter with actual drive letter which you want to use for example assign letter H)